Trawling Quotes (6 quotes)
Trawl Quotes, Trawler Quotes
Trawl Quotes, Trawler Quotes
[Overfishing—] it’s not just that we’re taking too many out, it’s how we’re doing it. We are wiping out their nurseries, … [because some huge boats] … bottom trawl … [with] nets that 50 years ago you’d have to lift when you came to coral reefs or rocks or nooks and crannies. Now they’re so sophisticated and so heavy, the equipment, and the boat’s so powerful they can just drag right over the coral reefs and the rocks and the nooks and crannies, and turn them into a gravel pit. … The trouble is those are the nurseries. That’s where the little fish hide and get bigger and get big enough for us to eat.
From transcript of PBS TV interview by Tavis Smiley (28 Mar 2011).
A huge net is being dragged across the sea floor, destroying everything in its path. Ahead of it bloom undersea forests and their hundreds and thousands of living creatures, both plant and animal; behind it is a desert. The net is pulled to the surface and most of the dead and dying life forms in it are thrown out. A few marketable species are retained. [Trawling] is like taking a front-end loader and scraping up your entire front garden and shredding it, keeping a few pebbles, and dumping the rest of it down the drain.
In Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth (2008), 191.
Bottom trawling is a ghastly process that brings untold damage to sea beds that support ocean life. It’s akin to using a bulldozer to catch a butterfly, destroying a whole ecosystem for the sake of a few pounds of protein. We wouldn’t do this on land, so why do it in the oceans?
In 'Can We Stop Killing Our Oceans Now, Please?', Huffington Post (14 Aug 2013).
Krill, a vital food sources for sea life, is being snatched in vast quantities, with trawlers traveling halfway around the globe, generating ruinous carbon emissions in the form of global supply chains.
In 'Can We Stop Killing Our Oceans Now, Please?', Huffington Post (14 Aug 2013).
Nobody is calling for an end to fishing on the high seas but some techniques, for example bottom trawling, must be banned.
In 'Can We Stop Killing Our Oceans Now, Please?', Huffington Post (14 Aug 2013).
When the seagulls follow the trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea.
Only utterance at press conference, directed at the media, after he won his appeal at Croydon Magistrates Court against a prison sentence for his conviction of assault on a hostile fan. Quoted in Simon Midgley, 'When the seagulls follow the trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea', The Independent (31 Mar 1995). According to Maurice Watkins (legal director of Manchester United) the statement was prepared by Cantona before facing the press, though the reporters may have taken it to be spontaneous. In Simon Stone, 'Maurice Watkins reveals role in Eric Cantona’s “seagulls” speech', The Independent (27 Nov 2012).
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
